Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Assistant Minister of Health and the Ministry Spokesman Dr. Mohammed Al-Abdel Ali stated that the use of AI in medicine is going to yield huge success, as it would increase the accuracy of breast cancer diagnosis.

Dr. Al-Abdel Ali made these remarks during the second day of the second Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit that’s being held in Riyadh and organized by SDAIA.

He noted that there is a 20% chance of these conditions being misdiagnosed by specialized practitioners. But with the use of AI, it would improve the accuracy by empowering and adding more productivity rates to the practitioners.

When the practitioners, physicians are supported by AI they will be empowered by it to diagnose more cases faster, which will, in turn, help in raising the rates of disease survivors, he said.

Dr. Al-Abdel Ali stated that the Ministry of Health and SDAIA have established the Center of Excellence for AI and health, which aims to support and unify the national efforts to increase knowledge and experiences in the field of AI and data.

The center also would drive AI solutions and develop more partnerships while strengthening the ecosystem with its strategic partnerships.

Within time, the center has studied and identified more than 100 uses in AI, as it has focused around 3 other diseases which are related to Diabetes, Cardiovascular disorders and Oncology.

He added that the National Breast Cancer Screening Program, which was established by the Ministry of Health around 10 years back, is considered as the one of the most important programs due to the fact that it touches the most important condition diseases that impact thousands of individuals annually.

Around 4,000 new cases with breast cancers were registered in the year of 2020, he said, while noting that according to the studies, around 55% or more of these cases are diagnosed in the later stages of the detection.

He said that the number of the cases represents between 15% and 17% of all the discovered cases per year, which is considered a big portion of all cancers.

During the summit, he announced the first results of the cooperation and the launch of the initial version of the AI-Based Breast Cancer Detection Program, stating, the program is considered a very important step, through which, they will write new chapters in medicine.